The goblin shaman began muttering an arcane chant as green energy began gathering around its staff. The two goblin guards rushed towards Merlin, keeping their spears extended out towards him.

Merlin started strafing left as he entered the room. Making an attempt to get some distance from at least one of the spears. He held his shield out in front of him, getting ready to parry one of the spears.

The leftmost goblin thrust its spear towards Merlin’s stomach. He responded by knocking the blade away, causing it to thrust past him. He followed up by closing the distance and slicing at the goblin’s neck in one motion. The second goblin thrust its spear through the first goblin, the spear penetrated through the goblin’s chest and thrust out the other side, catching Merlin off guard.

Merlin attempted to back away. But the spear had already closed the distance, successfully piercing his stomach. A notification appeared informing him he had lost seven health. He pulled away from the spear, a nauseating feeling filled his stomach. The goblin pulled its spear out of its dead comrade and went back to its combat stance.

The goblin shaman finished chanting, and a bolt of sickly green energy flew towards Merlin. He attempted to block it with his shield, but that didn’t seem to do anything to stop it. The energy enveloped his shield, quickly spreading up his arm until it reached his head, moments later the energy had faded away.

Merlin stood there as the room around him began spinning, he could feel his centre of gravity shift, it felt like he was falling over although he hadn’t moved at all. The goblin standing in front of him appeared to be swaying back and forth with the constantly shifting room. The goblin shaman had hit him with a disorientating curse that induced extreme vertigo.

The goblin guard pounced forward, thrusting its spear at Merlin’s chest. He attempted to block it with his shield, however he failed to judge the distance due to the disorientating curse. The spear that was supposed to be on a direct path with the shield had instead shifted past its reach, piercing his shoulder.

The goblin ripped the spear out of Merlin’s shoulder and started thrusting the spear once more. He successfully parried the spear away this time by using his sword, he quickly closed the distance and shoved the torch in the goblin’s face. The goblin recoiled in pain as its face started to char, dropping the spear and leaping backwards. Merlin stepped in, thrusting the gladius into the goblin’s chest, finishing it off.

The goblin shaman started chanting once more. The boss sitting on the throne started becoming restless. It grabbed hold of the large rusted cleaver resting against its throne. Merlin could feel the curse fade away, thankfully the durability had run out. He realised that he couldn’t afford getting hit with another curse if the boss was going to be fighting him now, but the goblin shaman was too far away for him to run up and kill it in time.

Merlin sheathed the gladius before leaning down to pick up the goblin’s spear. His eyes locked with the shaman, who was still concentrating on its chanting, the sickly green magical energies forming on the staff once more.

Merlin took a small run up before sending the spear into the air, the spear flew directly towards the goblin shaman. The shaman wasn’t able to move out of the way in time, and the spear pierced its skull, sending the shaman’s corpse flying backwards. The green energy around the staff fizzled out as the staff hit the floor.

The last goblin was visibly enraged by this. It let out a war cry before leaping out of its throne, charging towards Merlin, who drew his gladius and ran towards the goblin boss.

The boss swung the oversized cleaver horizontally, trying to cleave Merlin’s body in half. He quickly ducked underneath the cleaver, somewhat sliding across the stone floor, quickly getting behind the boss. The boss lifted its cleaver over its shoulder and turned around to face him, who at this point had straightened up and pulled a flask from his pocket.

“Here, catch!” Merlin taunted as he threw the flask at the goblin, who attempted to hit the flask with its cleaver, causing it to be coated by a spray of lantern oil. This only served to anger the boss further.

Merlin ran towards the goblin shaman’s corpse as the boss started charging at him. He quickly sheathed his gladius and used his free hand to rip the spear from the shaman’s skull, but the blade came loose, so he only obtained the stick it was attached to.

Merlin ran the tip of the stick over the torch, the dried rotting wood of the broken spear handle caught fire quickly, with the fire threatening to consume the entire stick in a matter of minutes.

The boss at this point was only about five metres away and rapidly closing in, Merlin threw the flaming stick at the goblin boss. The boss barely dodged the stick itself, but the flame from the stick made contact with the lantern oil on the boss’s body, erupting into a large flame.

The boss, much like the goblins previously, started to flail around in a panic. Merlin took this opportunity to run towards the other goblin guard’s corpse, grabbing its spear.

“Open inventory.” Merlin chanted, causing his inventory window to open. He quickly reached in and pulled out the last vial of lantern oil before waving his inventory away. He put the oil flask in his pocket before charging at the boss, thrusting his spear into the boss’s side.

The boss flailed around, attempting to swing its cleaver at Merlin. He kept avoiding the wild swings, they were powerful attacks but each attack was extremely obvious to track. He continued avoiding the boss’s attacks while repeatedly stabbing at the boss with the spear.

Eventually the spear ran out of durability and the handle snapped, leaving half of the spear wedged into the goblin’s chest. Merlin threw the last flask at the boss as the fires started to die down, the lantern oil lasted longer due to it all being on one target, but it still ran out rather quickly.

The additional oil caused the flames to rage once more. A few seconds later the boss stopped flailing, as Merlin saw this he backed away. He opened his inventory, pulling out the sling and a handful of ammunition. He filled his pockets with the metal balls before waving the inventory window away. The boss had entered another phase, meaning its attack patterns would change.

The boss gripped the cleaver with both hands and swung it horizontally with all its might, the blade whistled as it ripped through the air. The boss began spinning with the blade, its rotational speed kept increasing until it was making a full rotation several times per second.

Merlin started slinging metal balls at the boss as it started spinning, making sure to deal as much damage as he could before it finished charging up. The boss continued spinning around until its speed stagnated, moments later it began moving around like a spinning top.

The boss began moving towards Merlin, who was still slinging ammo at it. Merlin noticed something he found interesting, the fire that engulfed the boss had formed a little fire tornado above the boss’s head.

Merlin kept slinging metal balls at the boss while strafing away from it, the boss would have to eventually stop spinning, but he didn’t want to limit his damage output to only those gaps, he had a time limit.

The boss eventually fell over and stopped spinning, this was a scripted event that gave the players time to attack the boss unimpeded. The fire had also just died out, leaving Merlin as the only damage source. He shoved the sling into his pocket and unsheathed his gladius, rushing towards the boss.

Merlin cleaved at the boss’s throat, tearing a chunk of bloated charred goblin flesh from the creature. The goblin started to stand back up, its self-inflicted debuff had expired, meaning it was going to start spinning again. Merlin drove the gladius into the goblin’s chest, piercing the creature’s heart.

The goblin let out a pained roar as it took several staggered steps backwards, only to fall on its back. A notification appeared before Merlin, telling him he had defeated the boss and cleared the mini dungeon. He couldn’t help but fall to his knees when he realised it was over, even if this was a digital world he was still feeling exhausted.

A few minutes later, he stood back up, and began looking around for any loot drops. Next to the goblin boss’s corpse was a large glimmering sword, as well as a few small coins. He threw the two silver pieces into his inventory before turning to the sword.

Merlin attempted to lift the sword with one hand, however he was unsuccessful. He eventually dropped the torch and tried lifting it with two hands, it was heavy but he managed to lift it. He threw the sword into his inventory and inspected it.

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[The Bovine Butcher. (Uncommon)]

• Damage: +8

• Damage against bovine: +50%

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